Channels are defined paths for carrying signals. Channels may comprise radio frequency channels, optical channels, wired channels, or any other path, which can carry data. Channels inherently have a maximum capacity. One way to improve the utilization of channels is to process data before transmission, for example by applying compression methods. Accordingly there is need in the art for apparatus and methods to process data that will be transmitted over a finite capacity channel.
The terms frame and data frame are used synonymously herein. The term rate, as used herein is used to refer to the size of data frames produced by a variable rate encoder. Given the same input, a full rate encoding will produce a data frame on the order of twice the size of a half rate encoding. Accordingly the size of a frame and the rate of an encoder are both used to identify the size of data frames produced by a variable rate encoder.